Ph.D., UCLA, 2009
Post-Doctoral Fellow of Art History and Archaeology



Melia Belli received her doctorate in Islamic art history, with a focus on Indo-Islamic art, from UCLA in 2009. Her dissertation, “Royal Umbrellas of Stone: Memory, Political Propaganda, and Public Identity in Rajput Funerary Architecture,” examines the forms, meanings, and uses of royal Hindu memorials in north India. Melia has been traveling to South Asia for the past 15 years, as a tourist, Himalayan hiker, student of Hindi and Urdu languages, and researcher. She has received fellowships from the American Institute of Indian Studies to support her language study and doctoral research. Melia has presented papers and published articles on Rajput memorials, central Indian murals, and Rajput folksongs. At Washington University she will be teaching courses on Indian painting, Mughal architecture, and modern and contemporary South Asian art.